1. Technical Field
The present invention generally relates to electronic systems and in particular to temperature control in electronic systems. Still more particularly, the present invention relates to leakage currents and temperature control in electronic systems.
2. Description of the Related Art
Microprocessors and large scale application specific integrated circuits (ASICs) generally become unstable at low temperatures. These low temperatures limit the likelihood of reliable system startup, causing improper initialization and operation at cold temperatures. Existing solutions to mitigate this problem of improper initialization and ensure reliable operation at low temperatures essentially involves incorporating an ancillary heater attached to the ASIC. Ancillary heaters are employed and solely and/or mainly relied upon to pre-heat the entire system/device to a temperature within the device's prescribed operating limits.
As an alternative to ancillary heaters, system-level temperature compensation circuits and systems are employed to counteract and otherwise mitigate the effects of low temperature instabilities. However, these compensation circuits increase the complexity of the host systems, and in general are not as effective as ancillary heaters. As the host systems become more complex, cost, including additional implementation costs, inevitably increases.